In-house headcount on the rise, CLOC report says

Legal operations professionals are accounting for a larger portion of corporate departments, as in-house legal teams’ focus grows in scope and new roles are created for them, according to the latest survey by the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC). 



CLOC’s 2019 State of the Industry was developed by polling CLOC members during the first four months of 2019 about their 2018 results, and 213 companies responded about their corporate legal operations departments.



Of the companies that participated in the survey, 41 per cent reported an increase in full time attorney headcount in 2018, while 39 per cent reported an increase in dedicated legal operations.



While the report somewhat predictably shows the growing importance of legal operations professionals in large legal departments, the survey also contains some interesting statistics about how legal departments do their work.

Outside counsel costs, which are universally criticized as astronomical and getting worse, don’t consume most of corporate legal spend. In fact, they come under half — 46 per cent.

Median external expenditure is $11.7 million, according to the report, which was also summarised by our sister publication, Inhouse Community US. 



Breaking that expenditure down by individual in-house attorney gives a total of $451,000. The average legal operations department supports 22 staff, the report states.



Insurance companies have the highest total legal spend, which is little surprise, given the number of legal matters they handle.

According to the survey, the discipline and its practitioners are now an integral part of the legal department—or part of larger departments, and have an average of six operations professionals. Again not surprisingly, insurance companies have the largest number of legal operations employees, while large corporate departments have on average 14 operations professionals.

Not all of those professionals are lawyers, and while many are, they hold such titles as deputy general counsel, but most have more operations-oriented titles, such as legal operations manager. This is because, while they must fully understand the legal work done in the department, their expertise lies in procuring vendors (law firms and legal services), and controlling costs.

In terms of what legal operations teams want from law firms, respondents to the survey said the priority is more creative and alternative pricing arrangements, followed by better project management, more internal use of technology and digital access to content, advice, or customised documents.



You can read the full CLOC report here.